The state of ethical decision‐making research in accounting: A retrospective assessment from 1987 to 2022

Abstract

This study employs the bibliometric analysis approach to examine research on ethical decision‐making (EDM) of accountants from 1987 to 2022. The study specifically examines the developments in EDM research and evaluates the intellectual structure of the research field. Employing citation, co‐authorship, co‐occurrence and bibliographic coupling analyses, bibliometric data on 908 publications from the Scopus database was analysed. The results indicate that there has been a significant increase in the rate of publication on EDM of accountants following the spate of ethical breaches in the early 2000s. Further, we find that a large proportion of EDM in accounting research originates from developed countries like USA, Australia and UK. Our cluster analysis suggests that two main research streams have evolved over the period. Prior to 2012, researchers in this field mainly focused on individual level issues, particularly, on the determinants of the EDM process of individuals. Research, post 2012, however, has focused on firm‐level EDM issues including organisational ethics, culture, and corporate governance. The study further discusses the themes in detail andproposes a future research agenda.

Pensions and retirement systems research: a retrospective assessment from 1910 to 2022 using bibliometric analysis

“…With the application of statistical tools and techniques, bibliometric analysis is used in the evaluation of articles, books, conference proceedings and other publications and their citations that have scientific contents. Bibliometric analysis technique is currently being employed in a number of disciplines such as marketing (Fetscherin and Heinrich, 2015; Miskiewicz, 2020), the sciences (van Eck and Waltman, 2010), finance (Koenigsmarck and Geissdoerfer, 2021), medicine (Ahmad et al ., 2020), information technology (Chawla and Goyal, 2022) and accounting (Owusu and Korankye, 2023). The technique is considered essential in unearthing evolving trends in a field of research such as the performance of journals and articles, the collaborative efforts of authors, the geographical trends in publications, productivity of institutions regarding research publications, journals and countries in various fields of extant literature.…”

Emerging trends and research focal points of information technologies for financial control and accounting at the state and corporate level: Bibliometric research and visualization

“…The literature analyses collected are specified by a limited number of the research areas. Thus, the search identified publications that focus on ethical decision-making research in accounting studied by Owusu and Korankye (2023). Other perspective is highlighted in the publication by Poje and Groff (2022) who underline the value of ethics education in accounting.…”